24: SEASON ONE

By Tony Whitt     September 30, 2002

And you thought you had a hard day at the office...

Jack Bauer, head of the LA division of the Counter Terrorist Unit, is having a rough day. After being called in to prevent the assassination of Senator David Palmer, the first African-American with a shot at the White House, his wife and daughter are kidnapped by the same group behind the assassination attempt, a group that has an old score to settle with both Jack and with Senator Palmer. As the day wears on, Jack has to rescue his family, find the traitor (or traitors) working from within the CTU with the terrorists, and keep the Senator - and himself - alive.

Think of 24 as a sixteen-and-a-half hour long film, and you'll be better prepared for the experience - it's not the sort of series you can simply sit down to watch one or two episodes of and then go to do something else. Having the whole thing available on DVD makes it clear that 24 is the video equivalent of Pringles potato chips: you can't never eat just one, and given enough time and inclination, you'll eat the entire can at one sitting. Even the aftereffects are the same - you may feel a little sick to your stomach, but it's a satisfying sick, the same kind you have after getting off a rollercoaster you particularly enjoyed. Be warned, though - trying to watch this entire series in one sitting is not for the weak of heart. Get a good cushion.

Is it that good? Yes, it is - in a world without THE SOPRANOS, SIX FEET UNDER, and EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND (!), 24 would easily have swept the Emmys this year. Every one of those ten nominations was well-earned. Keifer Sutherland in particular provides what may be his best performance ever, making us believe without question that this is indeed the longest day of Jack Bauer's life. The supporting cast is also above and beyond the typical television fare. Dennis Haysbert's portrayal of Senator Palmer and Penny Johnson Jerald (Kasidy Yates from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE) as his scheming wife, for instance, ensures that what might have been a relatively boring subplot about Palmer's son being involved in an accidental death is just as gripping as the main plot. Sarah Clarke as Jack's trusted ally and former girlfriend Nina Myers is phenomenal, especially when the show provides a late, sharp plot twist that any lesser actress would have been hard pressed to incorporate into her performance. And while Carlos Bernard doesn't get nearly enough screen time as Tony Almeida, Nina's colleague and current flame and Jack's on-again off-again worst enemy, he brings a surly energy to his performance that keeps the audience wondering for weeks (or in this case, several discs) whether he's the mole or not. Finally, when a series has a guest cast that includes the likes of Lou Diamond Phillips (in a late season appearance that's far too brief), Zeljko Ivanek, and Dennis Hopper, how can it go wrong?

Surprisingly, it can, especially with the casting of Hopper. Hopper's great when you need an actor who can portray a madman convincingly, but he's not so great when it comes to doing a convincing Serbian accent. Ivanek would have been the better choice for this role, to be honest, despite his relative youth. Watching this DVD set reveals other flaws that crop up throughout the twenty-four episodes, too, such as points at which the claim that "events occur in real time" truly strain one's credulity. The "bumpers" that FOX used during commercial breaks when the series was originally broadcast last year are missing here, so we don't always get to see what's been going on in the four to five minute breaks. Because of this, it's sometimes a shock that this or that character is still doing something four minutes later that they should have wrapped up during the break. The breaks between episodes are also sometimes bad about this, as events are compressed in the same way they'd be done between consecutive episodes in a regular television series. Bear in mind, of course, that it's 24's special format that causes such problems, and while the flaws are noticeable, they're not the sort of thing that would destroy a normal television series's credibility in the slightest.

As for the story, it's by and large one of the most tightly plotted stories ever to be stretched over twenty-four episodes. There are only a few that seem unusually padded, such as the bizarre episode in which Jack's wife Teri (played capably by Leslie Hope) experiences a temporary case of amnesia after seeing her daughter killed in a car explosion (or so she believes). It's the only story element that seems designed specifically to keep things moving rather than advancing the complexity of the plot. As mentioned earlier, the subplot involving Palmer's son Keith (Vicellous Shannon), has the potential to bog the rest down, but only the efforts of Haysbert and Jerald keep it going. Finally, there are a few elements introduced early on that get lost as things progress, but how many series do you know that can juggle this many elements and keep everything together nearly so well? Whatever 24's flaws may be, the fact that the series mostly succeeds forgives them.

The DVD set itself should have lived up to its content a bit better, though. The transfer to the disc is beautiful, far better than most television series when they hit a digital format, and the widescreen format enhances the cinematic atmosphere of the show to no end. Unfortunately, it also exposes some of the bigger boners, such as the visored head of the show's ballistics expert visible just behind Sutherland in the very last episode as he shoots it out with the bad guys. I'm assuming we'd never have noticed this guy when the episode first went out, but here he's just a little too visible at a moment when we really need to believe in what we're seeing. The interface is very nice, featuring the ending theme that we never get to hear during the regular broadcast because of the stupid "split-screen" credits policy that seems to be the norm on the networks these days. It runs a bit slower than on the actual episodes themselves, but it's still a welcome touch. It would have been a much more welcome touch to have the "exclusive season one introduction" by Sutherland on the first disc rather than on the sixth, but seeing as the thing only runs about a minute and a half and amounts to little more than a commercial for the disc set you've just bought, it probably doesn't matter much. What does matter is that the so-called "Season 2 teaser" is little more than Sutherland saying that the next season will be as good as the first. Thanks, Kief. If there's a more complete teaser elsewhere in this set, it's not easily found, and that's not exactly the sort of thing that's best done as an Easter egg.

The only extra in this set worth the price of admission is the alternate ending for the season finale and producer Joel Surnow's justification of its use. Without giving anything away, the season finale provides one of the most extreme plot twists in the entire season, one which may leave some viewers screaming in frustration at the screen. (I know I did.) But the alternate ending, a far happier one, doesn't have anything close to the punch that Surnow and Co. ended up going with - while it would have made for an emotionally safe way to close out the season, it would have felt even more like a cheat than the conclusion that was broadcast. Surnow also claims that it would have been less dramatically satisfying - and sadly, he's right. Only the broadcast ending would have kept us coming back for more, and only that ending makes the wait for the season two premiere on October 29 that much harder.

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